The rough estimation of the power requirement of smart dust will vary a lot during evolution phase, but the previous threads in the discussions are quite right, IC is a very good design for providing power to these kind of devices, as yes instead of batteries a smart capacitor will also be able to provide power in dark conditions, this way the life of the device will become virtually endless. This is really amazing.

Given the dependence on light availability, it seems that a device would always need some form of energy storage to take it through the "dark times." It might be able to be a supercapacitor instead of a battery, though.

I think we all understand that the amount of harvested power depends on sun exposure conditions...but the article talks about usage in wearable devices so presumably the size of the battery is constrained...having the spec of 70mA in that context is somewhat puzzling to me as watch sized solar battery will harvest orders of magnitude less than 70mA...Kris

I would think that the amount of power involved depends on the size and configuration of the solar panel and the quality and intensity of the light striking it. What is important about this device is that it efficiently handles the highly variable power that the panel is generating and saves it to battery storage with minimal loss in the conversion process.

>> This is really a remarkable design by STMicroelectronics, the input voltage regulation is very good, i

ST has a really good design team. Just as they now control the MEMS gyro and XL market, they continue to show innovation sparks in many areas. This is a new growth market and it is evident that will create new solid business here.

There are many variants to consider - the sun, the capacity, the charge rate. For different applications, they can have different amounts of power which they can harvest and will be dependent on many factors